AuthorTopic: NGD (Read 1362 times)

May I present the G-5 Fender VG Stratocaster...and it's an awesome little axe. It got here about 5 hours ago, and I haven't even put a fresh set of strings on it yet, but I've been playing the heck out of it! I may not be a huge fan of modelling amps, but this modelling guitar has just blown me away! Played through modelling amps, some of the guitar models don't come through very well, but played through my vintage Fenders, or my ADA rigs, it just RIPS!!! Everything sounds authentic through a real amp, and I'm just amazed. Just the ability to go from electric guitar to acoustic alone was worth the investment, and how does it sound as an acoustic? If you close your eyes, you'd think I was playing a Martin Dreadnaught. And I can make that Martin have 12-strings too with the twist of a knob....and a tremolo bar on top of that?!?!? That's insane

...This also does Stratocaster, Telecaster, and Gibson tones as well as an Ibanez Humbucker type of guitar tone. These are the modeled guitar in electrics and they are all completely quiet...no 60 cycle hum at all.

But that's not all... You get different tunings with the twist of a knob. Have you ever tried to go to a drop"D" tuning with a floating bridge on a live stage? That's a horror show. Not anymore

...As you can see, it's a 2006 American Standard Strat, and it takes 4 AA batteries to power the virtual guitars and tunings. The guy I bought it from obviously has not played it for a while, and it was very well kept, nearly mint condition. It came with the case candy you see scattered around the guitar , and an extra battery clip in case it runs out of juice at a gig. That's what the yellow pouch is for. What really floored me about this little axe, is when I had it plugged into my Classic rig and MP-2 rig, and had them set for a good overdrive tone, and turned the knob to the Baritone setting...my jaw hit the deck.

Dante, I never tried the Variax so, I can't say for certain. What I can tell you is that I can get very good renderings of a vintage Strat, and Tele, and either Gibson or Ibanez with high powered humbuckers for the electrics, and for the acoustic instruments, I get a very good Martin steel string, a Dobro, a Nylon string, a Sitar, and a very convincing Super 400 tone. For the tunings, I get the standard with any of the above, Drop "D", Open "G", D Modal(DADGAD), Baritone, and twelve string. The tuning works with all the modeled guitars, and there are some crazy combinations. How about a Martin Dreadnought in Baritone, with a tremolo bar? or a 12-string Nylon guitar? SICKKKKKK!

Thanks man, I'm happy with it. I have been watching these on Ebay for the past year, since they were discontinued in January of last year along with the GC-1, GK Ready Stratocaster. and I noticed how the prices have been rising over the past year with the Mexican made ones. Those are the ones I usually see on there, the USA made guitars are few and far between, so I got lucky with this one. A year ago, the prices were dropped down to about $800-$900 USD, in the shops, to get them out of inventory, as they were no longer being made, for the Mexican Fenders. The USA made Fenders were reduced to $1600 USD, for the same reason. As for the used guitars on Ebay, I've watched the used Mexi-Strats like this go from around $600 to around $1100 USD over the past year. It seems a fair estimate to say the average selling price of the Mexican ones seems to be around $1000 USD. As for the USA used guitars of this nature, when I do see them up for auction, the average going price appears to be around $1500 USD. But that varies from site to site. I do remember seeing a USA made one on Reverb, in Blizzard Pearl, with no case or accessories, going for $950 USD. I seriously considered that one, but I think it may have a few issues with it's electronics, and I wanted a case to protect it, so I believe I made the right choice. There is a NOS sunburst, USA made G-5 in a shop in France on Ebay, that is listed at $2700 USD. Way out of my price range.

So we'll see what happens with the price of these in the future. If it follows the current trend, they could get pretty expensive by next year, or they may just level off where they are at now.

Thanks man. I'm considering a few mods to it, but not many. One of the things I was thinking of at first was to replace the tuning machines with Fender locking tuners, but I was playing this thing for most of the day yesterday, and using some heavy tremolo throughout, and it really didn't come out of tune very much at all, much to my surprise. The other considerations I have in mind for mods, is to put a brass bridge block in it from KGC, as well as the brass compensated spring anchor, and maybe the raw tremolo springs. When I got it yesterday, the bridge was pulled tight against the body, with 5 springs in it, I took out two of them and floated the bridge like I do with all of my Strats, and went to town on it! It's really a well built and beautiful instrument. The other mod I will definitely do is replace the pickups. The stock, standard Strat pups in this thing are noisy as hell, and don't really sound that spectacular, so this may be the guitar that I try out the Zexcoil pups on. This way, it will be silent through an overdriven amp as the virtual guitars are. Other than the possibility of locking tuners if that becomes an issue, this axe doesn't really need anything at all, other than a great amp to play it through, and I've got that covered pretty well.

Hey Harley, how does it go when you want to change during a song eg going from say acoustic to crunch. I don't know anything about these guitars/electronics, from looking at the pics it seems you have to turn the selector knob, I was thinking it would be great to have it switched via a midi patch change.

Hey Richard, Here is how the controls are laid out in this guitar, and how they work in specific modes.

There is the normal Volume and Tone knob, which function normally in all the electric guitar modes, albeit the magnetic pickups or the hexaphonic pickup. Then the two smaller knobs are the "T" and "M" knobs, "T" is for the tuning, and "M" is for the mode, or modelling as I call it. The selections on the "T" knob are: N-Normal D-Dropped "D" G-Open "G" (D-G-D-G-B-D) d-D-Modal (D-A-D-G-A-D) B-Baritone (B-E-A-D-F#-B) 12-12-String The selections on the "M" knob are: N-Normal Guitar, (Modelling off, and the three Strat pickups are in use. (This also disables the tuning function). S-Virtual Stratocaster T-Virtual Telecaster H-Virtual Gibson/Ibanez A-Virtual Acoustic In Acoustic Mode, your 5-way switch becomes your acoustic guitar selector, and the choices from the bridge pickup, (Pos 1) to the neck, (Pos 5) are: 1-Steel String Acoustic 2-Dobro (Resonator) 3-Classical (Nylon String) 4-Super 400 (Jazz Guitar) 5-Sitar In the Acoustic Mode, the Tone knob becomes a Small Room Reverb control to regulate the depth of the reverb effect.

To answer your question Richard, I've found it pretty easy to go from electric guitar to acoustic and back with the knobs. The way the selections are laid out, tells me they were thinking about doing the same thing at Roland/Fender. I simply use my pinky to roll the Mode knob back to the "A" position, and step on a Clean Tube setting in the amp at the same time, (with no Reverb on the setting). To Go back to electric guitar crunch tone, I simply reverse the process. There is no way to do these changes via MIDI with this guitar since it only has the standard 1/4" guitar jack to connect to an amp. To do what you suggest, can be done with the Fender/Roland GC-1 GK Ready Stratocaster, and the GR-55 Guitar Synthesizer, or the Boss GP-10. The GC-1 Strat is not the only guitar that can do this, as Godin Guitars also make a variety of guitars that have the GK-3 pickup and controls already built into them, with the 13-pin DIN plug. I think there may also be a few other companies making similar guitars for this purpose. However, since the Stratocaster is the most familar and most comfortable guitar to me, The GC-1 and GR-55 are both in my near future. Getting back to the G-5 Stratocaster, it's designed primarly to give you all these different guitar sounds from one guitar in a live, or even a recording situation, without the need to have a carload of guitars with you wherever you go. I'm finding this particularly appealing to me because I used to take 2-3 guitars with me to every gig, a Strat, a Humbucker, and either a Strat or Humbucker guitar tuned to Dropped D. Now I can cover all of that with this one guitar. I'm a big fan of that concept already! But we're not finished with the electronics in this guitar yet, it still has a few other cool tricks that I haven't explained yet when you are in the electric guitar mode, and I'll go through those now. When you are in Virtual Stratocaster mode, the 5-way switch operates as it does in the Normal (magnetic pickups) mode, with all 5 Stratocaster tones as you would expect. In the Telecaster Mode, positions 2-3-4 are the familiar Tele sounds we all know. Positions 1, and 5 give you an extended range of the bridge and neck pickups. That's about the only way I can describe the tones. It's still the Tele pickups, but with a bit more in the frequency range, if that makes any sense. In the Humbucker Mode, once again positions 2-3-4 are the Normal Humbucker tones you would associate with a Gibson. They're warm and midrangey as you would expect. Positions 1 and 5 give you a Bright Humbucker for the bridge and neck pickups. This is where my reference to Ibanez comes from. While Gibsons have a very unique tone compared to Fenders, The humbucker pickups were great for cancelling out the 60-cycle hum associated with single coils, but you sacrificed some of the high and low frequencies to get rid of that hum. With this guitar, you can put those frequencies back in, and still have the character of the humbuckers. I'm a big fan of that too! All of the modeled guitars in this instrument are silent, no hum at all.

So...there you have the complete run down of the electronics in this and how it works. It takes 4 AA batteries in a clip, that you insert in the battery compartment in the back of the guitar, and with a good set of Alkaline batteries, you can get 8-10 hours of playing time. The blue LED positioned between the Volume and Tone knob lights up as soon as you plug the guitar in, so you want to unplug it to preserve battery life. As you use the guitar, the LED gradually gets dimmer, and when it's time to change the batteries, it begins to flash. Since I got an extra battery clip with this, I can change them out in about 10 seconds.

I've been playing around with this guitar in my ADA rigs and loving the tones I'm getting from all the models through the ADA's. One thing I didn't expect to see happen with the modeled electrics, is that these models respond to the amp SOOOOOO much like the real guitars, you forget you are using them. I've been getting some beautiful feedback on the modeled electrics like I would get with a normal guitar, and it's different for each model, Still harmonically good and very useful. If I had any reservations about this guitar about how it would perform in a live situation, I don't anymore. This is going to be my go-to live axe for straight guitar needs.